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Bit of an eventful day. Logged in this morning to see a fleet from The Sero descending on Bunda, in breach of our non aggression treaty. Not pleased so ping him an in game mail letting him know that! Then do some maths and evacuate some of the ships back to Al Kaphrah and Sirius leaving enough at Bunda to blunt Sero's fleet.

The fleet took Bunda as expected, then immediately turned for Denebola which is a bloody odd choice. Sero has no intel on Denebola so i'm guessing he's hitting blind. I hope
that's a habit he sticks with! Denebola is a fair distance from Bunda so I move forces across to defend. Unless Sero techs weapons twice in 12 hours Denebola will be held. Even if he does double tech a fleet from Chara can mop him up.

I then deploy a fleet from Sirius to retake Bunda, and move 70 ships up from Sarin towards the galactic core. Despire Sero's impressive industry stats I still think he's spread very thin. I'm concentrating on setting up specific forge worlds to churn ships out straight into fleets, whereas he has most of his worlds generating 1 ship every 12 hours.

Jeeva went for the speed deal so did that trade.

After mail to Sero he claims he thought the non aggression pact had expired. He may be telling the truth, difficult to tell. I hard bargain him to hand over his jump tech in exchange for $75 and a 7 day non aggression treaty. We'll see whether he betrays me twice. The jump tech now means I can hit him in all sorts of places, so that makes me think he's on the level for now. I believe a war with him now will just fuck us both and hand the game to someone like Boylee.

I pump economy... I need to do that at least one more day... hopefully the treaty with Sero will hold to give me time to do it. At some point in the last hour Sero techs weapons up to level with mine. No one has the next weapon tech yet although George may not be far away. Hopefully he's not naive enough to trade it to Sero considering he will shortly have a border with him. I should have it within 12 hours.

Fletch sends me $25. He's not got long now... he's down to 2 planets. I'm hoping that people will see Sero's raw economy and industry numbers and stop tech trading with him. If he can maintain tech parity he will be very hard to beat. <Hindsight note - At this point The Sero had a massive lead in both economy and industry>

30/03/2010 17:10
Bit of a quieter day today. As expected have retaken Bunda and The Sero's ill fated expedition is wiped out at Denebola.

Looks like George is the only other weapons researcher. I open a dialogue hoping to get him to charge more for weapons when selling tech. Cartel's are always good ;-)

Cash trade made for engine speed with Boylee. Boylee is beginning to look very formidable, but he's not going to be my problem until end game assuming we both make it that far. He looks like he may well roll up Hawk and Jeeva. As an aside Jeeva looks to be maintaining Tech parity, and has the best engines.

Fletch is wiped out by The Sero. We're down to 11 players.I have a mid sized fleet engagement with Wondwi and take another of his planets. Someone's fed him weapons tech. Can't say i'm surprised. Most likely candidate is Sero but it could have been anyone.

22:00
The Sero has left his homeworld Yilden pretty much defenseless. I seriously consider a treaty breaking hit. However at this point I decide against it. Reasoning is... his defense fleet of 90+ ships are still intact. To take it would mean committing my reserve fleet. My alternate reserve fleet is already in the process of moving up for a final assault against Wondwi. That 90 strong fleet could do a lot of damage. It would also completely destroy any diplomatic options. Given Sero's industry and economy a hit on Yilden would not be a knockout blow... more a Pearl Harbor esque hit!

Also, breaking an agreed treaty doesn't sit right with me. In conversation with Grom at work i'd pretty much summed it up as 'Breaking a treaty to win the game... that's acceptable and to be expected. Breaking a treaty for a small gain would just be being a dick!'

So.. I hold my ground and do nothing. I also don't send any communique's at all to Sero. I'm hoping he keeps these bad habits up, so that later on I can be in a better position to exploit them.

One plus point of Sero's distributed Industry and economy, is that he doesn't have many 'key' worlds. It's going to take a big coordinated assault to hurt him. That's what i'm going to have to set up. Also may well take a leaf from his book and drop some industry on all planets. As fleets manouver it'll give them some ships to hoover up.

I give Hawk two weapon upgrades for cost. Boylee is looking ominous as he's currently at war with Hawk and Jeeva, and appears to be winning in both. Any indirect help I can give his opponents the better I think.

3agle looks like he's going to be next out. Awesome-o and Postscript look to be carving him up.

31/03/2010 22:30
Pretty uneventful day for me. Take another of Wondwi's worlds. He's down to 4 now, but he has a not insignificant fleet around Maia which i'm probably going to have to deal with as I doubt he'll hit anyone other than me if he goes offensive. Lot of fleet manouvers to put me in a position to take the last of Wondwi's not Maia useful worlds.

Sero is moving a 100+ strong fleet rimwards. He says i've got nothing to worry about but given his past actions, I move ships around to defend should they decide to break into my lines.
I am now clear leader in weapons tech, though it appears George is a only a few hours behind.

02/04/2010 01:00
Sero's scanning is now good enough to see the fleet sat ready to hit Yildun should I give the word. I think it worried him as he sent a mail to me accusing me of an aggresive build up
Think I managed to convince him all was well. His Turtle Soup fleet is now 129 ships strong and moving around the rim.

Sero's advantage in industry and economy is too big to ignore now. Tentative alliance with Seedy George and Jeeva is established to start taking him down next week. George starting on Sunday, then Jeeva and me on Monday.

Final moves against Wondwi in progress. Maia will be tricky though and to be honest I have no real desire to hit it.

04/04/2010 13:30
No log yesterday. Have been with family for Easter. Sero started to hit George two days before our planned operation start. Seedy George looked to be in trouble against Sero, and I realised that if I left it until Monday Sero's fleets would be pretty much unbeatable. I needed to strike, so last night after much soul searching decided that it had to be done so launched an attack on multiple stars under Sero's control, including his homeworld Yildun.

These were reasonably successful, though Sero's reserve fleet will recapture Yildun within 3 hours of me taking it. The plan now is to cause chaos in his back line. Apologies for breaking the treaty Sero. If you'd never hit Bunda unprovoked I don't think I would have done it.

Comments

I wasn't hitting blind on denebola, and I had been promised 2 levels of weapons tech Never came through though xD, didn't expect to get further either.
"Hindsight note - At this point The Sero had a massive lead in both economy and industry" And that was why I fell I think. I didn't have the science to back it up, and suddenly nearly everyone refused to trade with me And I'm glad the attack on Seedy happened when it did then... if you were all ganging up on me anyway. It may not have made a difference, but it caused you to rush at least, so if I had had support, it may have been different. I want to here Jeeva's side, because he was really friendly with me for most of it, even while this was going on... xD

And as a final note, I honestly did think the treaty was up. I launched the fleet the second I thought it expired, and I felt like enough of a dick about that xD I wish I never had done it, I was just so paranoid of you. Rightly so, but still pre-emptively. :/

Heh, yeah you fell prey to the waaaaay out in front syndrome. I'm still impressed with how you managed to get industry and economy so high compared to everyone else. I think it was the sensor advantage that did for you as I had about a day to prepare for your counterattack which meant I pulled ships from all over the place to defend.

Still not sure on the Denebola logic. It was miles away from Bunda (giving me time to move fleets to defend) and a pretty boring planet if I remember rightly. I'm curious whether you took Bunda, and then looked around and moved on Denebola, or whether you'd pre ordered the route the night before?